Blinkie Tutorial

So you want to make a blinkie? Well they are really easy, and once you start - well that's it, you'll never stop! Anything can be turned into a blinkie.

Today I'm going to show you a standard blinkie - this will also be assuming you know your way around PSP or Photoshop and Animation Shop 3 (which is free online as a demo)

Okay you start with a blank canvas of 150pixels by 20pixels (standard blinkie size) and add your picture - if you have a large enough picture you could just crop it to 150px by 20px:

I've enlarged this picture so you can see it better. Then you add a border (this is done within the same canvas, don't go outside this size or the finished blinkie will be bigger)I've used contrasting colours (pink and black) and each little square is 2 pixels. In the same square I added a name - this blinkie is for Candace, so I put her name. Now save your first picture "blinkie1" as a .gif file.

Blinkies are made up of different frames, like a flip book, so this is your first frame. The second frame is the same as above only you change the border slightly. In the top left corner of the blinkie above, I started with a pink square, for the second frame we will start with a black square and then go pink, black, pink, black etc.

So using the same blinkie you saved above, now save it as "blinkie2" and change the border. I say save it now, because if you accidentally save the second blinkie, it will save over your original picture and you will be back at square one.

Here is what your second blinkie will look like:
Can you see the difference in the border from the one we did earlier to this one? Okay, so now you have your two blinkies - you can now use the wizard in Animation shop and go ahead and make your blinkie move! Here's your finished blinkie:

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Once you master this really simple border, you can put spaces between the dots, make the dots as rectangles, throw in a few more colours or learn how to make bigger more elaborate blinkies. Here's one I made a few years back for Easter. I hand drew every element with my trusty pen-tablet and then animated it:

Photobucket
See - the possibilities are endless! Have fun! - Oh and just so you know, you'll have to upload your blinkies to an online storer like Photobucket because Blogger doesn't allow animated gifs (they just won't work if you upload them into a post)

7 comments

Ashley said...

That's pretty awesome that you can make those Sarah!

Margy said...

Wow, you are a wizard! I have been salivating for one of those pen tablets, well until I realized that I didn't have any true artistic ability. lol

Great tutorial!

Dawn Gallop🐝 said...

tooo cool!

Lisa Petrarca said...

You never cease to amaze me Sarah...now the trick is to actually do it myself!

Talin HG said...

That sounds too easy except I have no clue how to use the animation program :(

Melissa said...

I always wondered how you do it I still dont think I could make one but I like that the day i get adventurous enough to try I know where to look for the how to :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I honestly had never thought how they were made but now it makes so much sense! haha.